The trash nothing site and mobile apps provide two separate services, free email accounts and
free hosting for freecycling groups. This page discusses how the
free email accounts work and how people use them to become members of freecycling
groups on Yahoo Groups. If you're looking for information about our hosting service,
check out our freecycling group hosting page.

How do trash nothing email accounts work?

The email accounts provided by trash nothing are
designed to make freecycling quicker and easier.
Everyone who signs up gets a free trash nothing email account they can use to subscribe
to freecycling groups on Yahoo Groups. Thousands of freecycling members and
moderators around the world are already using trash nothing to improve their freecycling experience!

Why is the group I moderate listed on trash nothing?

We maintain a list of freecycling groups around the world as a convenience to people looking to
subscribe to their local freecycling groups with trash nothing email accounts.

How do I get the group I moderate added to trash nothing?

Just send us a message with a link to the group web site
and we'll add it to our list.

Why would people want to use trash nothing instead of the Yahoo Groups web interface or their normal email accounts?

We've packed tons of new features into trash nothing email accounts that
make them quicker and easier for people to use with freecycling groups.

Neither the Yahoo Groups website or any other email accounts are designed for freecycling groups.
They all work fine for normal emails but they don't understand the rules or the different
types of posts that are part of freecycling.

For example, composing correct post subject lines or browsing only offer posts that are not taken
are difficult and time consuming tasks with Yahoo Groups or an email account from Gmail or Hotmail.
But these tasks take no time or effort at all with a trash nothing email account.

Why would I want members of the groups I moderate to use trash nothing?

Are you tired of correcting subject lines and hearing complaints about spam or email overload?
A lot of moderators have these problems and waste valuable time and energy fixing them
every time a new member joins or a new spammer shows up. With trash nothing email accounts,
these problems disappear!

The post composer built-in to trash nothing automatically handles correct subject line
formatting for every post so neither you or the group members have to. It also lets members
choose to use the Fair Offer Policy so more
group members have a fair chance of getting items.

Since trash nothing email accounts are separate from people's personal email accounts,
members don't have to worry about overloading their inbox with group emails on high
traffic groups.

These days, more and more groups are becoming infected with auto-reply spammers and
spammers who use non-member email addresses to send spam. But with aggressive
spam filtering, trash nothing blocks these spammers from reaching group members with
trash nothing email accounts. And with the ability to flag any post in two clicks,
group members can quickly and easily alert you to new spam and other inappropriate posts.

And by using trash nothing email accounts, members gain more privacy because
they never have to reveal their personal email address while using their local groups
or interacting with other members.

Do you have ideas or feedback to improve freecycling on trash nothing?Let us know!
We'd love to work with you to improve the freecycling experience.

Can I still kick / ban / moderate people who use trash nothing?

Yes. People with trash nothing email accounts are normal email members of groups on
Yahoo Groups so moderators are always in complete control of the group and the group membership.

How do I know if people are using trash nothing?

You can easily identify trash nothing users by the email address they use to subscribe and post to a group.
All trash nothing users email addresses end with @user.trashnothing.com

How can I tell what IP address a trash nothing user has?

Emails sent using trash nothing email accounts contain the user's IP address in the
X-trash-nothing-User-IP header.

How can I customize how trash nothing email accounts work on my group?

The Group Settings page at the link below allows Yahoo! Groups moderators to customize
how trash nothing email accounts work for members of their group.

By default, the email accounts are designed to work well on any reuse group and most
moderators won't need to change the settings for their group.

At the same time, changing the settings has the potential to drastically reduce the
workload of moderators since the settings can be used to automatically enforce
certain group rules (eg. reposting limits, crossposting restrictions, preventing phone numbers in posts).

Ask us by sending a message from the contact page and we'll get back to you as soon as possible.

Common Misconceptions

People can use trash nothing to see group posts without being a member of the group.

False. The trash nothing site and mobile apps only provide email accounts to people who sign up.
Like any other email account, they won't see anything from a group until they use their email account
to subscribe to a freecycling group. Only after they are subscribed to a group, as a normal
email member, do they start seeing the group posts that Yahoo Groups sends to them.

Group posts are republished on trash nothing.

False. Posts only appear in the personal trash nothing email accounts given
to people who sign up and use their trash nothing email account with a freecycling group.
As normal email subscribers to a group, people with trash nothing email accounts receive the
posts because Yahoo Groups sends them to their email account.
Posts are not otherwise made available on trash nothing.

Access to group posts on trash nothing violates Yahoo's Terms of Service.

False. The trash nothing site and mobile apps work using the standard Yahoo Groups
email subscription and membership process that allows any email address (whether from Gmail, Hotmail or trash nothing)
to subscribe to and receive email from a group on Yahoo Groups. In this way, every trash nothing
user has a valid email subscription to the groups they are accessing with their personal trash nothing email account.

People have to use their existing Yahoo Groups and/or email accounts and passwords to use trash nothing.

False. The trash nothing site and mobile apps give everyone who signs up a new email account
to use. The site and mobile apps do not access, or have any need to access, existing usernames or passwords to work.

False. There is nothing built-in to our email accounts that causes spamming.
All emails to groups and group members are sent by people using our site.
People using our email accounts may attempt to send spam posts to a group or
send spam emails to members but we have aggressive spam filters that try to prevent this kind of abuse.
Spamming is against our terms of service, and if we discover someone spamming, we will immediately
kick the person off our service.